


Delicate Things

by letters_of_stars



Category: Free!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, also general mid-twenties angst, flower shop au, fluffy fluffy fluff, wedding au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letters_of_stars/pseuds/letters_of_stars
Summary: The first time they meet results in broken glass, spilled flowers, ten stitches, and a stranger sitting besides Rei's hospital bed.The second time they meet, Rei falls in love.





	Delicate Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Reigisa Creative Works Exchange 2018, using the prompt for a flower shop au with some Christmas date and visiting the shrine for the New Year thrown in as seasoning. So thank you anonymous prompters!  
> I'm not sure how much this actually is a flower shop au, but I had fun writing it anyways!

The first thing Rei sees when he wakes is bright white light and he thinks to himself, “Thank God.” Because that pure light must mean he’s surely dead and the events of the past few hours can become just an embarrassing blip of memory on his way to the afterlife. 

The first thing Rei  _ hears _ when he wakes up is, “Oh good, you’re not dead!” Which seems incredibly contradictory to his own conclusion and forces him to at least open his eyes. 

It’s not the light of the afterlife. It’s hospital lights. He’s in a hospital bed. And there’s someone sitting in a chair at his bedside who is most definitely not his older brother. The stranger leans closer, eyes wide with concern. “Do you need morphine? Or...or opium or something?” 

Rei highly doubts he needs opium, but there is a rather sharp pain on the side of his head. He lifts a hand to inspect it and finds that arm hooked up to an IV. An IV, and he’s wearing a hospital gown, sitting in a hospital bed, which means that today actually happened and why did the doctors have to make him live? 

“You’re not supposed to move,” the stranger says, and Rei finally focuses his attention there. Yes, definitely a stranger—blond curls, large eyes, upturned little nose—but he seems familiar for some reason. “Where’s Katsumi?” Rei means to ask, but it comes out as a complete croak. The stranger brightens up and grabs for a paper cup on the side table.  

“Here, it’s water.” He holds the cup up to Rei’s lips and, succumbing to even further embarrassment, Rei lets himself drink. He’s actually remarkably thirsty. “I should probably call the nurse, huh?” the stranger says as he draws the empty cup away. “I think that was the first thing I was supposed to do.” 

With the water wetting his tongue and throat, Rei is able to ask, “What happened? Where’s Katsumi?”

“Is that your brother?” the stranger asks. When Rei nods, the stranger reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out his phone. “Um...well, it’s only ten, so he’s probably still at the reception. He said to tell you ‘sorry’ when you woke up too. Not sure if I should have done that before or after calling the nurses. Which I guess I still haven’t done. Hmm.” He sets his phone down on the side table. “Well, he said to tell you sorry that he can’t be here, but there’s no one else to bartend if he left.” 

Rei sighs and closes his eyes against the glaring light. “And who are you?” 

“Oh, I’m Nagisa!” the stranger replies happily. “One of the florists for the wedding.” Like that explains anything. Rei opens one eye to glare. But then Nagisa leans closer and whispers, like it’s a secret, “That was a really impressive leap over the table. It’s too bad all our flower arrangements were on the other side.” 

“Ah.” Rei sinks back into the pillows, just in case they want to swallow him up. That was it. That great embarrassment he wants to wipe from his memory forever. 

“Yeeeeeaaaah,” Nagisa agrees slowly, and then his hand is on Rei’s arm, patting comfortingly. “It’s alright. It was only ten stitches. In the hairline too. So the scar won’t show. At least, after your hair grows back. They had to shave some of it away. You look sort of punk rock.” 

Rei turns his head to further study this strange man in the chair. He’s still in his florist’s apron, decorated on the breast with a stitched sprig of peonies. Hazuki Flower Arrangements, huh? The vases on the tables had looked very nice. Rei remembers stopping to admire them while everyone was setting up for the reception. Katsumi had been readying the bar, the florists had been hurriedly packing up their extra flowers after putting bouquets on all the tables, and little fairy lights were being strung along the wooden beams of the pavillion. And then the weddings guests had started to arrive earlier than scheduled and Rei had looked up at the sight of a white dress and then his feet were moving for him, searching for any place to hide, anywhere, and behind the florists’ table had seemed like the best idea at the time and then his world was the sound of shattering glass and a final slam into some wooden crates.

“I guess I should probably call the nurse now, huh?” Nagisa leans over Rei to press the little button on the arm of the bed. He smells very nice, Rei realizes in a subtle sort of way. Like greenery. Not flowers, but the smell of leaves when you rub them between your fingers. Like cut stems. “Alright if I stay? I’ve been given orders.” 

He doesn’t need a stranger watching over him and he doesn’t have a clue what the thing about orders means. But Rei finds himself nodding anyway, very much the same way his feet had automatically carried him over the table. Yes, he would very much like this florist Nagisa to stay with him while the nurses check his ten stitches. 

And so Nagisa does, albeit told to wait outside in the hallway, and Rei is given the okay to go home and told that he’s very lucky the damage wasn’t more extensive.There’s no sign of concussion, though he should immediately call if any symptoms appear, and the cuts along his face and arms are superficial, easily treated by an antiseptic that was applied while Rei was unconscious. 

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Nagisa declares as he waits for Rei to change back into his formal wedding-staff wear. He puffs his chest out a little. “So I’ll take you home. Besides, I’m the one with a van.” 

The van turns out to be for Hazuki Flower Arrangements. It is purple with peonies painted on the doors. Rei recognizes it from weddings he’s been dragged along to before, but he doesn’t recall there ever being a boy working. He’s pretty sure he would have remembered this one.

It’s silent in Nagisa’s car once Rei gives the instructions to his apartment. Well no, not silent. They just don’t talk. Nagisa hums along to the radio and taps his fingers against the wheel. Rei stares mournfully out the window and wonders just how much of a ruckus he caused. Probably ruined the entire reception, having one of the bartenders taken away by ambulance. He studies the patch of shaved hair right behind his ear and sighs. This is such a wreck. 

“You can drop me off here,” he says when they get close to his apartment building. Nagisa turns down the radio and shakes his head. 

“Sorry, can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” 

Nagisa reaches for the phone in his pocket once more and shoves the screen in Rei’s face. Rei blinks, adjusts his glasses, and studies the long line of texts, dotted with stickers and emojis. Then he checks the contact at the top. It’s a text conversation with ‘Rei-chan’s Brother’. 

“Rei-chan?” Rei squeaks, and Nagisa grins at him. 

“Yep. Rei-chan! And Rei-chan’s brother, who says thanks for staying with you and would I mind watching you a bit to make sure you’re alright. And I don’t mind. So can you tell me where to park?”

“Rei-chan,” Rei grumbles once more before directing Nagisa around back. “I’m really feeling alright,” he says once Nagisa has put the car in park, even though the painkillers from the hospital are sort of starting to wear off. 

“I promised your brother, Rei-chan. Sworn orders!” Nagisa insists as he opens his door, and he bounds up the steps to wait for Rei at the back entrance to the building. And then bounds back down, actually locks his car, and then he’s up again, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’s wearing sneakers, Rei realizes in a vague way as he follows at a more sedate pace. Being the florist for a wedding must be so much easier than being the bartender. His own feet are aching in his dress shoes. “Besides, it was my flowers you split your head open on.” 

Rei sighs again, audibly, so he knows Nagisa hears it, but Nagisa ignores it and just hums all the way up three stories to Rei’s apartment where he stands in the doorway and announces, “Wow. You really like things neat, don’t you Rei-chan?”

“Enough with the Rei-chan,” Rei groans as he slips off his shoes and goes to collapse on the couch. He shuts his eyes and turns his face into the cool fabric of the pillow. Now that feels so much better. 

A finger pokes his shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep.”

“I’m not falling asleep.” 

“Okay, good.” The couch sinks by his feet and Rei squints down at Nagisa, bundled at the other end with his legs pulled up to his chest. He wears mismatched socks—one pink with yellow stripes, and the other covered in penguins. He smiles when he catches Rei’s gaze. 

Rei props himself up on his elbows and stares at this strange little man at the end of his couch. “Hazu—”

“Nagisa.” 

“Nagisa-kun,” Rei repeats with a huff. “Just what are you doing here?” And before Nagisa can show him the texts from Katsumi again, Rei clarifies with, “Why were you the one to come with me to the hospital? Why you? Why did you care?”

Nagisa’s cheerful expression shifts, only slightly, but it’s a softer expression. His eyes seem a little bit shadowed, a little bit deeper. He shrugs one shoulder and gives Rei a lopsided smile that is more genuine than any grin of his Rei has seen so far. “Well, I guess I think that someone who would rather dive over a table into a faceful of glass vases than face a bride and groom might need a little sympathy tonight.” He pauses and then adds, “It was a really, really nice leap. Did I tell you that already? Beautiful, really.” He scrunches his nose a little while Rei tries not to blush. “Well, until you crashed into the flowers and knocked yourself out. But until then, really beautiful.” He ducks his face and smiles down at the sofa cushions.

Rei sits up just a little straighter. “You’re an...interesting person, Nagisa-kun.” 

Nagisa waves that away with one airy hand.  “Oh, I just do the flowers.” 

“Are you in school?” Rei asks, because continuing this conversation is more interesting than bemoaning his wretched fate. Nagisa laughs and shakes his head, curls bouncing around his face. 

“No, I know, I look like I’m seventeen or something but I graduated from university a few years ago. I’m just...wandering right now, until I have some real plan for the future. My sisters let me work for them because they feel sorry for me. You? Do you...give alcohol to weddings full-time?”

Rei shakes his head. “My brother needs my help sometimes, for bigger jobs. Like weddings. I work for a research facility in Iceland.” 

Nagisa’s mouth drops open. “You work in Iceland?” 

“Remotely,” Rei corrects immediately. “I...I guess I compile all the data over here and send it to them over there.” He frowns, and maybe it’s the ten stitches talking, but the words slip right out. “It’s a little boring. I was going to be stationed at the main facility, but I guess I just…” He shrugs. 

Nagisa waits patiently for him to continue, but after a moment he just nods along. “Iceland would be pretty cool. Cooler than flowers, at least.” 

Rei clears his throat pointedly. He’d rather not think about Iceland. That just reminds him of the wedding. And he very much wants to not think about the wedding. Except:

“Was it really obvious I was hiding from the bride and groom?” 

Nagisa nods and says, “Yup.” 

Way to sugarcoat it. Rei winces. “Um...was it a big fuss?” 

“Yup!” Nagisa replies happily. “But Chiasa and I figured you probably had a good reason for it, so we pretended that we’d knocked down a bunch of displays, since you already wrecked a lot anyway, and then me and Mizuki sort of hid you behind the table while your brother called an ambulance, and then we sort of snuck you out to the ambulance down the street while everyone started dancing. And then your brother gave me his number and asked me to go to the hospital with you because he had to stay to serve drinks and you only needed stitches anyways. All in all it wasn’t too bad. So it  _ was _ really obvious you were hiding from the bride and groom, but I don’t think the bride and groom actually noticed. Well, they noticed, because there was a huge big crash, but they didn’t notice it was  _ you _ . So if anything, they think we’re just super clumsy florists. That’s okay then, right?” He pats Rei on the leg. 

That’s the first good thing to happen this entire wretched evening. Rei lifts an automatic hand to scratch at the spot behind his ear, but Nagisa lunges forward the entire length of the couch and snatches him by the wrist. “No itching,” he orders, face alarmingly close, and then he is gone again, just as suddenly. “Let me get you some painkillers. Where do you keep your medicines?” There’s the thump of cupboards opening and closing. “Ah, I might have guessed. In the basket labelled ‘medicine’. My mother would like you very much, Rei-chan.” 

Rei lies still on the couch, arm frozen where Nagisa had caught his wrist. That had been...very sudden. At least the shock keeps him from itching until Nagisa returns with some painkillers and a cup of water. “Can you take pills with water? I always take the big ones with applesauce. Do you have applesauce?” 

Actually, Rei takes the big pills with pudding, but he doesn’t want to admit that. It’s not adult enough. “Water is good,” he says, and regrets it for the next ten minutes as he chews each disgusting pill to the point he can wash the pieces down. Nagisa doesn’t say anything, but perches on the arm of the couch and seems busy studying the decor, which is sparse. Rei swallows the final pill and they sit in silence for a few minutes. 

“I could have gone and bought some applesauce,” Nagisa says, and the whole situation suddenly seems so absurd that Rei snorts a laugh, muffling it as much as he can in his elbow. Nagisa peers at him, head cocked to the side. “Are you alright?”

Rei nods and tries to school his face back into something more serious. “Yes, sorry, it’s just been a strange night.” He sits upright on the couch and Nagisa plops down beside him. “I went and bought groceries this morning,” Rei continues, not really sure why he’s bothering to say this, maybe with the hopes Nagisa will understand, will get where he’s coming from. “And everything was perfectly normal. But tonight I ended up in the hospital with ten stitches in my head.” He nods towards Nagisa. “And now you’re here in my apartment and I don’t even know you, really, besides the fact that you’re a florist named Nagisa who takes pills with applesauce.” He laughs again, dry and humorless, and puts a hand over his eyes. “But the worst of it all? The very worst? I accidentally agreed to serve drinks at my ex’s wedding reception.” 

Nagisa is silent for a moment beside him before finally saying, “Ah.” 

Yes, ah. That about sums it up. 

More silence. And then Nagisa breaks it again. “I don’t think you really handled that the best you could.”

Rei slowly drags his hand down his face and sighs. “Yeah, I realize that.” His hand flops onto the couch cushions lifelessly. “I feel like such an idiot.” 

Warm fingers interlace with his own. Rei’s eyes snap downwards but Nagisa is just studying the wall as he slowly pulls Rei’s hand into his. “Next time try to avoid the flowers,” he says, and turns to Rei with a laugh already bubbling out of his mouth and suddenly the night seems just a little less like a disaster.

 

* * *

 

“I double-checked the names, cross my heart.” 

Rei still logs into Katsumi’s computer to make sure he isn’t about to cater a wedding for another ghost of his past. But this time it seems safe. The venue is much more formal this time, inside a marbled hall instead of an outdoor pavillion. More suitable for the colder weather that promises snow any day now. He helps Katsumi prep the table to look appropriately classy bar-like, and then goes about carrying the champagne inside. Mimosas have been requested and Katsumi wants to have as many premade as possible for the initial rush. 

Rei sets another box down near the table and straightens up, brushing his hands off. He isn’t expecting the sudden flower being tucked behind his ear. In fact, he’s so shocked at the unexpected touch that he freezes completely. “Purple is your color, Rei-chan,” a familiar voice chirps, and Rei whirls around to find Nagisa bouncing excitedly before him. 

“Nagisa-kun!” And beyond that, he doesn’t know what to say. It’s been five months since the disaster wedding, and Nagisa had basically disappeared once Katsumi had finished at the reception and come knocking at Rei’s apartment. “Guess I’m not needed anymore,” he’d said with a grin, and the little purple van had been gone before Rei gathered the courage to ask him to stay, even if just for a little longer. Because that was the odd thing. He hadn’t wanted Nagisa to leave. 

Bonding with people isn’t really something Rei does on regular occasion. But the apartment had seemed very empty and much colder that night, with his drawers perfectly sorted and cupboards labelled and just the sound of the television playing the late night anime Katsumi had left on. 

He’d debated getting Nagisa’s number from his brother’s phone, but then ten types of anxiety over how that could possibly be considered weird had jumped in and then, well, he’d been busy and why would Nagisa  _ want _ to talk to him? He’d probably forgotten all about Rei. 

Except now Nagisa stands there, beaming, with a whole bouquet of the purple flowers in his arms. “I was hoping I’d see you.”

Rei coughs a little and studies the ceiling as he says, “It’s nice to see you as well.” 

Nagisa hums and peers past Rei to where Katsumi is setting up the bar. He waves a little and then returns to Rei with wide, pleading eyes. 

“I’m bored setting the flowers by myself. Come help?”

Rei glances backwards at Katsumi, who rolls his eyes and makes a shooing motion with one hand. Apparently the mimosas can be a one-man job tonight. 

“Are you still working for Iceland?” Nagisa asks as he wanders around the tables, placing sweet bouquets of purple and white and pink. He slows down when he places flowers, takes the time to twitch the white tablecloths into a more appealing pleat, and coos to the flowers as he moves them centimeter by centimeter until he’s satisfied with an arrangement that doesn’t look all that different to Rei but is apparently much better. 

“I’m still working for Iceland,” Rei tells him, arms full of flowers. 

“Are you still sad?” Nagisa asks, tearing through the eight layers of propriety most people would carefully observe and respect before cutting to the chase like that. And how is the job treating you? What do you think of the latest big news? What about this cold weather? No. None of those. It’s disarming. But also…maybe a little refreshing? Rei doesn’t really want to talk about the weather.

Instead, Rei adjusts the flowers so he can see Nagisa a little better. “What makes you think I’m sad?”

Nagisa raises his eyebrows and taps a stem against his bottom lip. “Because you are, aren’t you? Mmm, sorry, I guess you probably don’t want to talk about it with me.”

Rei doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He helps Nagisa finish the table arrangements and Nagisa turns to him with a mournful smile. “We’re not sticking around for much longer, so I guess I’ll see you around, Rei-chan.”

No, wait. He just—

“Nagisa...kun…” His outstretched hand clasps at air. Nagisa stares at him, face gone oddly blank. “Would you…?”

Nagisa takes his hand and slowly folds it back into Rei’s body. “Can I buy you a drink? If your brother doesn’t need you, can I buy you a drink?” 

“Get out of here already!” Katsumi orders him when Rei approaches the bar and he won’t listen to another word Rei says. Which is how he and Nagisa end up walking side by side away from the wedding venue, breath steaming in the near-winter air. They pass car after expensive car parked along the road, picking up frost, and there’s a distinct sound of general celebration that probably means the wedding party has reached the reception venue. Hopefully there are enough mimosas. Nagisa trails his hand up above his head, brushing the leaves that have frozen to the branches instead of falling. He’s still wearing his purple apron.

“Do you know any nice bars around here?” Rei asks after ten minutes of silent travel. There’s barely anyone on the streets, though he can see traffic increasing up ahead where the trees give way to restaurants and shops, the bustle of people wrapped up against the cold.

“Bars?” Nagisa looks up at him with a wicked smile beginning to curl around his lips. “Who said anything about bars?” 

“Um.” Oh dear. “You did? When you offered to buy me a drink?” 

Nagisa has the gall to look affronted. “And you assumed I meant alcohol? Rei-chan, I am all about clean living.” 

“Wait, so where are we going?” Rei’s question comes out breathless as Nagisa picks up the pace.

“For drinks!” Nagisa cries, and laughs as he breaks into a jog. He’s all red cheeks and blond curls and bright eyes as he turns around and jumps in place, silhouetted against the bright yellow of countless city lights as he waves for Rei to catch up, and that is the moment that Rei first loves him. It’s much too fast and completely illogical and no experience Rei has ever had with love has made it seem like an appealing emotion to repeat, but nevertheless here he is, jogging to keep up with this odd little florist that somehow makes his heart leap in a way he’d forgotten it could. 

“Milkshakes!” Nagisa declares once Rei has caught up to him. “Milkshakes for both of us!” 

“It’s winter!” Rei protests immediately, and Nagisa catches his arm and loops them together.

“Milkshakes in winter are how you know you’re alive, Rei-chan.”

Which is how, a half hour later, Rei finds himself swaying gently back and forth in the children’s swing in a nearby park, empty besides the two of them. He’d tried sipping at the nearly completely solid treat with his straw until he nearly blacked out, so now he uses the little plastic spoon to work away at his strawberry shake with extra whipped cream and watches Nagisa swing beside him, almost done with his triple chocolate berry shake with cookie decor. Back and forth, back and forth. Rei reaches to rub at the scar hidden beneath his hair and realizes the flower Nagisa tucked there earlier is still there, slightly wilted now. He plucks it from behind his ear and studies the delicate purple petals.

“It’s a sweet pea,” Nagisa tells him in a soft voice. He digs his heels into the wood chips and stops swinging, and then leans over so he can run a gentle finger up the stem. “It symbolizes all sorts of thing, of course, but my favorite is goodbye.” He turns a smile up at Rei, one of those more complicated smiles, sadder smiles. “A happy goodbye. I had a lovely time, but now I have to go.” 

Rei raises an eyebrow. “Not really appropriate for a wedding then?” 

Nagisa laughs a little at that, breathless. “I guess. But they’re so pretty. If I ever got married, I would want sweet peas at my wedding. Purple, just like these ones.” 

Rei has no idea what to say in response to that. “That’s nice,” he says, and wants to die. But Nagisa just laughs again and takes the opportunity to look into Rei’s milkshake container.

“Can I have your strawberry?”

Rei tucks the sweet pea away back behind his ear. “Didn’t you have a triple berry something something?” 

“Yes, but I  _ really _ like strawberries.” 

Rei sighs, dramatic, so Nagisa knows he’s joking. “I suppose.” He goes to tilt the milkshake in Nagisa’s direction. Nagisa just opens his mouth and waits expectantly. 

Good thing the lights don’t really reach the park because Rei knows he turns a spectacular red. “Oh, um…” He grabs for the little plastic spoon and wrestles the strawberry into it. And it really is such a little spoon. He could swear he feels the brush of Nagisa’s lips against his fingers when he offers the strawberry up. Nagisa closes his eyes and hums happily. “Thanks Rei-chan,” he mumbles around a mouth full of fruit, and Rei remembers he should probably take his spoon back. 

“Anytime,” he mumbles, and retreats back into his own space. He stares at the spoon for what is probably far too long before scooping up another bite of milkshake and popping it in his mouth. And then the words just come, swinging gently in an empty children’s park with the taste of strawberry on his tongue: “I thought that by this time in my life I’d be happy.” 

Nagisa blinks, swallows, and then tilts his head to the side. “And why aren’t you happy?” 

These are things he’s never told anyone, not his parents, not Katsumi. But Nagisa is different. Nagisa doesn’t exist in Rei’s normal world. He is a vague existence who smells of fresh-cut stems, who comes into Rei’s life for a few hours at a time and then disappears again. There isn’t harm in telling him. And there isn’t harm in loving him, because it isn’t really truly real. 

“You remember when we met?” Rei asks. 

“Sort of hard to forget you diving over our table and ruining our flowers,” Nagisa reminds him and Rei winces. 

“Yes, ah...that. Well...I suppose...I just..” He sighs and turns away, one foot kicking dejectedly at the wood chips. 

Nagisa does the work for him. “You said it was an ex getting married.” 

Rei nods and traces a circle in the wood chips with his foot. “Yes. But she was more than that. We were high school...well, we were high school sweethearts. And I thought that meant forever. I got into my dream university, and then we were supposed to settle down together. I turned down the offer to go work at the facility in Iceland because I was ready to start my life with her.” 

Nagisa leans over to set his milkshake container on the ground and swings a little closer. “Rei-chan…” 

Once started, it’s remarkably easy to keep going. “But then she broke up with me. And she said it was a long time coming but I never saw it. Maybe if she’d told me when she became unhappy I could have...done something.” He sighs again. “So she left, and I guess she met someone new because she married him just a few months ago. So yes, I’m unhappy. Things weren’t supposed to turn out like this.” He scuffs out the circle in the wood chips with an annoyed little kick. “I’m twenty-seven. By now I was supposed to be married, with a job I loved, and maybe a goldfish in a great apartment…” 

“Your apartment is very well organized, Rei-chan,” Nagisa reminds him helpfully, and Rei snorts. 

“Alright, my apartment is organized. At least there’s that.” And then he frowns. “I really shouldn’t feel so sorry for myself. Lots of people have it harder.”

Nagisa shrugs one shoulder. “If you’re sad, you’re sad, Rei-chan. You can’t control that.” 

“I guess.” Rei meets Nagisa’s gaze and stares into those suddenly darker, more serious eyes. “I just...feel like a failure. Not that anyone has called me that but…” He pauses, takes another spoonful of milkshake, and wonders how to phrase this in a way that makes sense. “I’m failing myself. I’m failing the kid who was in high school thinking that in ten years, he would have it together. He would be living some sort of ideal life, and instead it’s just me, doing flowcharts on my laptop for eight hours a day, and I don’t even have a goldfish.” He stares at Nagisa and waits for Nagisa to laugh, to brush this away, but instead a little line forms between Nagisa’s eyebrows. 

“That’s okay to feel sad over, Rei-chan,” he says, and then turns in the swing so he can pump his legs once more, start himself rocking to and fro again. “It’s like all your dreams have died. That’s sad.” 

Like his dreams have died, huh? Maybe that is a good way of putting it. Much too good, actually, to be put that way from someone who doesn’t understand. Nagisa, Rei decides then, is probably much sadder than he lets on. He’s simply better at hiding it.

He’s just finishing his milkshake when Nagisa gets a text, pocket pinging a happy little melody. “Ah, I should go, my sisters are missing me.” He stands from the swing and gives a little salute. “Well, maybe missing isn’t the word, I just wake them up if I get home too late.” 

Rei stands up so quickly he gets lightheaded. “Can I give you a ride? Or, I mean, it’s my brother’s car but I—”

Nagisa snaps off the salute and smiles. “Train isn’t far. I guess...I might see you…?” 

“I could call you?” Rei suggests tentatively. “I, um…could take you for a drink. It could be alcoholic. Or a coffee. Or milkshakes again, though I don’t think this really counted as ‘drinking’. More eating. We could go eat too. That could be...something that happens.” 

Nagisa’s smile widens. “Yeah. That could be something that happens. Give me your phone.” 

Nagisa inputs his number with tongue sticking out one corner of his mouth and then hands Rei back his phone with satisfaction. “There. No excuse now. I expect drinks.” 

“Drinks,” Rei agrees, and Nagisa laughs and waves as he runs back towards the brightly lit street, away from the safety of their little playground. 

“Drinks!” he calls again before turning and running off into the night. 

Rei feels for the sweet pea behind his ear, the same ear where now behind runs a little scar. The death of his dreams. 

What dreams has Nagisa lost and buried?

That night, wrapped in his comforter, Rei thinks about the single moment he fell in love, Nagisa suspended in the air from his jump with the lights of the town illuminating the shine of his hair, his smile, the joy in his eyes. Beautiful and spontaneous and everything Rei’s life isn’t. But it’s ridiculous to love someone because of a single moment.

There’s a magic about weddings, Rei decides. That feeling of reckless belief in love. The idea of possibility. It was why so many people ended up hooking up afterwards, discounting the amount of alcohol they ingested. That was it. That was why he had loved Nagisa in that moment. The Wedding Effect. It should wear off in a few hours if he just sleeps it away. 

But when he wakes up the next morning, it’s still there. 

 

* * *

 

He waits four days before texting Nagisa and asking if he’d like to meet up for coffee. Nagisa agrees right away with a bunch of smiling emojis and asks Rei when he’s free. Pretty much whenever, since Rei’s work is all done remotely and he has absolutely no social life outside of helping Katsumi out at weddings, but he doesn’t go into that much detail, just says he can work around when Nagisa is off. Tuesday, Nagisa says, which is way sooner than Rei was expecting, but he agrees anyway, and they look up a coffee shop that’s about halfway between the two of them. It’s in a nice little shopping district and Nagisa suggests they can wander around after getting coffee. He needs to start thinking about Christmas presents for his family. Sounds great, Rei agrees, and then immediately starts freaking out over what he should wear. A sweater? His favorite sweaters have worn away at the sleeves from him wrapping them up around his fingers. Jeans? There’s a mysterious permanent stain on one pair and the other—as he discovers—now sags past his hips due to recent weight loss. After half an hour of running around an anxious mess, he gives in and calls his brother. 

Katsumi studies Rei’s face through the video chat and sighs. He’s still at his bar, cleaning up after closing. 

“You really like this guy, don’t you?” 

Rei shrugs. Of course he does, and Katsumi knows it. 

“Do you know for sure he likes guys?” Katsumi asks, and the question manages to bring Rei up short. He doesn’t actually know for  _ sure _ . Maybe some of Nagisa’s words or his actions hinted at something more than friendship—he seems to like holding Rei’s hand quite a bit—but maybe Rei is just grasping, desperate for some sort of connection. “And please tell me he knows you like guys too,” Katsumi adds in his long-suffering tone as Rei’s silence stretches on.

“He ate my strawberry,” Rei says in way of explanation, and Katsumi rubs at his forehead. 

“Oh boy…” He sighs and then meets Rei’s gaze through the screen once more. “That might be something to figure out before you get anymore invested.” 

_ I think I fell in love with him.  _

He doesn’t say that out loud. Just nods along. 

“Your blue cardigan Mom got you last year, do you still have that?” Another nod. “Okay, just wear that with a t-shirt and your nice khakis. Problem solved.” Katsumi grins. “Big brother to the rescue again. And what’s that on the bed? A scarf? That’ll look nice too. Wear that.” 

Rei goes to pick up the scarf and retrieves the cardigan from his closet. “I guess that’s alright.” 

“You’ll be fine,” Katsumi assures him. “I mean, think of how you met. If you survived that first impression, I think you’ll survive anything.”

“Gee, thanks.” Rei holds the cardigan up against himself in the mirror. Okay, he can do this. He hasn’t been on a maybe-date since high school, but he can do this. 

On Tuesday, he arrives at the coffee shop half an hour early and takes a book out of his messenger bag so he has something to do besides panic. It’s only fifteen minutes before the chair across from him is pulled out and Nagisa flops into it, face pink from the cold. “I thought I’d beat  _ you  _ here!” he says, and smiles that big wide smile of his that completely destroys the Wedding Effect theory. This is truly real, and Rei actually thinks he loves him. Oh dear. “This is a cute place!” Nagisa continues, glancing around the coffee shop. It’s dark wood with little corners and bookshelves stacked with board games, soft instrumental music playing above the hushed atmosphere. The drinks chalked up on the board behind the counter have puns in the names as well. There’s a lot of people typing away on their laptops, earbuds in, and Rei has to agree. It’s a cute little place. He’ll have to remember it for days he can’t seem to get any work done at home. 

“Want to go order?” Nagisa asks at last when Rei doesn’t contribute anything, stripping off his winter coat and gloves. The snow falling outside is still caught in his hair, sparkling in the dim lighting. A few melted flakes decorate his eyelashes. “Rei-chan?” Nagisa asks after a beat of silence, and Rei nearly knocks over his chair standing up so fast. 

“Ah, yes, let’s order!”

To his not-complete-surprise, Nagisa orders something very very sweet with extra syrup and then adds another three packets of sugar. Rei goes with a hot chocolate. He’d never gotten the taste for coffee. 

“So...how’s business?” he asks once they’re both seated. It’s the only thing he can think of to talk about. Meeting Nagisa in a normal place like a coffee shop is sort of strange, to be honest. Weddings have become their thing. Weddings and hospitals and milkshakes in winter. 

Nagisa shrugs and runs one hand through his hair. It bounces back into place immediately. “The same, really. We always get more orders around Christmas, but then it dies down until White Day. Chiasa is really working this wedding thing recently, but there’s not a ton of weddings in winter either. They usually get me to watch the shop during the slow weeks. It’s boring.” He pouts for a moment and then takes a sip of his drink and brightens up. “How is doing math? Still...mathish?” 

“Lots of numbers,” Rei assures him with a grin. 

“Good to know,” Nagisa says with a firm nod, and his eyes wrinkle at the corners as he lifts his cup for another sip.

They make small talk while they sit, the sort of thing that friends should probably know about each other. Favorite foods, movies, musical genres. It turns out Nagisa had changed schools twice to chase after various niche interests, and then still had no idea what he wanted to do after graduation, much to the exasperation of his entire family. He’d bounced around jobs for a bit as well before finally settling at the flower shop, which was the first place he’d stayed employed for more than three months straight. Just hearing about it makes Rei grateful for his job that might be boring but is at least consistent.

“Were you a swimmer too?” Nagisa asks at one point. “Because...like, when you jumped over our table it was like you were diving…” 

Rei shakes his head. “Sorry. Track and field kid. You swam?” 

Nagisa beams. “Breaststroke. My team went to Nationals once. Got sixth.” 

Rei wouldn’t have ever placed Nagisa on the swim team in his head. He seems much more the art club type, or even gymnastics, but Nagisa happily chatters away about his friends on the swim team as his coffee goes cold, sharing all sorts of stories from his younger years. Rei eventually has to remind him that his drink exists and relaxes in his seat, whole chest feeling warm, as Nagisa tries to finish the coffee as quickly as possible. “Are you ready to go shopping?” he asks after they’ve fallen into a comfortable silence, and both bundle up for the cold weather outside. 

“You don’t have to come with me. I take a long time to choose presents.” Nagisa sighs as he pushes open the cafe door and leads the way down the street. “My sisters are so picky.” 

“I could get ahead on my holiday shopping,” Rei says lightly. Nagisa turns to smile up at him and his gloved hand finds Rei’s own. 

“Thanks Rei-chan.” He squeezes once and lets go. “Ooh, I haven’t been in that shop before! Looks cute!” 

It turns out that Nagisa likes to buy an obscene amount of presents for his friends and family. “I have only one day to make up for the rest of the year,” he quips when Rei makes some small comment, and grins before hurrying off to pay for the pile of gifts in his basket.

Rei finds a nice jacket for Katsumi and Nagisa helps him buy some tickets online for a show his parents have wanted to go see for ages. “You just tell them you have something important going on that day so they don’t make other plans,” Nagisa warns as Rei slips his phone back into his pocket. “Like you’re hosting a dinner party or something!” 

“I never host dinner parties though!” 

“Not even hotpot?”

“They live hours away. They wouldn’t come visit me for hotpot.”

“Okay, we’ll think on it.” The two of them find a bench to sit on, brush away the snow, and Nagisa runs off to buy taiyaki with custard filling. The bundle of bags and boxes he’d purchased surrounds the bench like an advertisement to consumerism, but Nagisa seems happy as he returns and hands Rei his snack. 

“Thanks for coming with me, Rei-chan. Shopping alone would have been boring.” 

Rei stares at the taiyaki in hand and breathes out slowly. Okay. He has to find out now. 

“Is this...what this was? A shopping trip?” 

Nagisa stares over at him with cheeks full and eyes wide. He chews quickly, swallows, tilts his head to the side, and asks, “As opposed to…?” 

“I don’t know.” Rei squeezes the taiyaki so hard that he feels it burst in his hand, custard leaking out the seams. “A...a…” His voice drops so low even he can barely make it out over the bustle of the street. “A date?” 

Nagisa keeps staring at him, and Rei wonders if he didn’t hear, but then his face turns soft. “Do you want it to be?” 

Rei gulps and feels his hands shake. It’s like he’s in high school all over again. He nods. 

And Nagisa smiles. “Then it’s a date.” He scoots closer on the bench and leans over until his head is resting on Rei’s shoulder. His hair is as soft as Rei had imagined and smells of some sort of fruity shampoo. It compliments the smell of greenery that always seems to hang around him.

“That was easier than I expected,” Rei admits after a moment. His blood is pounding and he feels a bit dizzy from nerves, but this is still good. Still absolutely  _ perfect _ .

“Well, I am extremely manageable,” Nagisa says sagely and Rei hides a snort in his hand. “Rude,” Nagisa mutters, and then smiles as he looks up at the sky. “Snowflakes!” 

Rei tries to wipe the custard from his nose. “It’s been snowing this whole time,” he points out. 

“Well, then I’m just mentioning it again in case you forgot! You’re welcome, because they’re super pretty.” Nagisa nuzzles his head into Rei’s shoulder a little and then sits upright to try to catch snowflakes on his tongue. 

And after a moment, so does Rei, because catching snowflakes on his tongue seems like the sort of silly impossible thing Nagisa inspires him to do. 

It’s probably just the leftover taste of cream, but the snowflakes are delicious. 

 

* * *

 

One morning, about a week later, Rei wakes up and realizes he’s actually looking forward to the day. And it’s a very odd feeling, actually feeling excited for the day again. But that is how Rei feels now. Because he knows there are texts to be exchanged and calls to be made and even those silly little things make him smile for no good reason except that he’s just generally  _ happy.  _

It’s been a while since he would have described himself as happy.

Nagisa can't seem to get over how organized Rei’s apartment is and finds it absolutely delightful to open a cutlery drawer to find every compartment labelled and the cutlery exactly where it belongs. It was the result of not much to do, Rei admits during their second official date. He likes to be organized, but the labels were way more than he normally would have had time for. 

“Is it like this everywhere?” Nagisa asks, nodding towards the hall where the bathroom and Rei’s room await. “Wait, where did you say the snacks were? Your system is failing me, Rei-chan.” 

“First cupboard on the left,” Rei tells him as he prepares the movie. “And...um...yes, the bathroom cabinet is labelled, but not my bedroom. I’m not  _ that _ bad.” 

“I think it’s good!” Nagisa protests as he locates the crackers and stands on tiptoe to pull them down off the shelf. “My sisters and I make a mess. You can’t ever come visit me, okay?” 

“What, never?”

“Well, at least give me three weeks notice so I can start cleaning.” Nagisa bounds back from the kitchen and settles next to Rei on the couch. “Also Mizuki is way too curious about you and I want to protect you as long as possible. What are we watching?” 

A horror movie. Katsumi’s suggestion. “Works wonders on my dates,” he’d told Rei with a knowing wink, and so Rei had gone with it because it was the only idea he had. Nagisa does that thing—that oh so very nice thing—where he rests his head against Rei’s shoulder—and they start the movie, box of crackers held between them. 

It turns out Nagisa is one of those people who just can’t seem to keep his mouth shut when it comes to watching movies, which Rei could have predicted, but unlike most other talkative people asking what just happened when they could have simply been paying attention, Nagisa mostly whispers to himself, coming up with elaborate backstories for the background characters and pointing out the plot holes with his own ideas for how that hole could be fixed. Which is excellent, because Rei had forgotten just how much he hates horror movies and Nagisa’s almost constant commentary keeps his mind off the jumpscares and piercing shrieks of terror. On screen, a young girl scrambles into the kitchen and searches desperately for a knife before the creature can catch up to her. Her hands are slick with blood and her legs are torn with claw marks. “Looks like somebody didn’t label their knife drawer,” Nagisa whispers, and it forces a laugh out of Rei even as the girl is caught and brutally killed before she can find a weapon. 

“Are you ever going to let that go?” 

“But it’s such a you thing!” Nagisa protests, and grins up at Rei. “You’re the only person I know who does it and it’s wonderful and now everytime I see drawers and cabinets I think about you.” He winces a little and shoves a cracker in his mouth. Muffled, he admits, “So I do spend a lot of time thinking about you, I guess.”

For perhaps the first time, Rei feels like he suddenly has the upper hand. “Oh really?” he asks, grin spreading across his face as the screams of terror recede into the background. “How much time?” 

Nagisa hits him very lightly in the arm and stuffs another cracker in his mouth. Does he actually look embarrassed? “I’m trying to watch a movie, Rei-chan, be considerate.” 

Rei hums and sits through the rest of the bloodbath, and then, while the credits roll, he asks, “So what do you think about?” 

Nagisa stares stubbornly at the screen. “Just your amazing organizational skills, Rei-chan.” 

Rei doesn’t stop smiling all night.

 

* * *

 

On Christmas Eve, a bouquet of what he finds out through an internet search are yellow acacia is left for him with his elderly neighbor lady, and Rei isn’t sure why Nagisa didn’t just hand him the bouquet in person. He scours websites trying to find the meaning behind yellow acacia. Renewal. Purity. Lots of religious symbolism. Being honorable and straightforward. And then finally he finds the answer he wants in the Victorian language of flowers. Good friends, or a secret love. Rei stares at the word on his screen until his eyes water. Love. Love, love, love, love, love. A secret love. 

Does it mean Nagisa is onto him? Or does it—?

Rei shakes his head and turns off his computer before he can latch onto any silly ideas. He puts the bouquet in his nicest (i.e only) vase and places it in his bedroom.

Why wouldn’t Nagisa just give him the flowers? True, Rei had gone to the grocery store for a half hour, but Nagisa could have texted to see if he was home or not. But it’s not like Rei had done much better. He’d slipped his Christmas gift into Nagisa’s bag at the end of their last date. He’d wrapped it up with sparkly wrapping paper and a huge ribbon he’d bought just for the little journal that had caught his eye in a store window. It was simple, an understated blue, but it was the kanji scrawled up one side of the journal that Rei had noticed.  _ For Dreams.  _

“It’s like all your dreams have died,” Nagisa had said, but now, for the first time in a long while, Rei is suddenly finding he has new dreams. 

He hopes that Nagisa, wandering, working in a flower shop because his sisters feel sorry for him, might be having some new dreams too. 

Would Nagisa think that was silly? Had he opened it already? Would he even remember that conversation? Was Rei being a complete idiot? There’s so much to worry about he can’t pick what to start with. 

Maybe Rei knows exactly why Nagisa had left the flowers with his neighbor. 

Nagisa calls him Christmas Day and, after relaying the drama that had unfolded with his sisters and the chicken dinner, he very quietly thanks Rei for the journal. “I’ve already started writing in it.” 

“Oh. That...good. That’s good.” Rei’s really glad Nagisa can’t see his face because he knows it’s all pink. He reaches out and plays with one of the flowers in the bouquet. “The flowers are beautiful. Do they...have a meaning?” Wow, real smooth. Real subtle.  

But for once, Nagisa doesn’t seem to have much to say. “I was just thinking of you,” he replies softly after a few beats of silence, and then rushes out, bright and cheery and sort of loud, “So Merry Christmas, Rei-chan, I’ll call you later, goodb—!” Nagisa ends the call himself before he’s even done talking. 

Rei puts his cellphone down on his bed and just stares at the flowers for a while. For him, at least, they mean a secret love.

 

* * *

 

True to his word, Nagisa is the one to call and invite Rei out on New Year’s Eve for the bell ringing. He’s already promised New Year’s Day to his sisters, but neither of them feel like braving the crowds to go ring a bell and while Rei doesn’t really feel like dealing with the hordes of people either, something about going with Nagisa makes him a little bolder. 

It is absolutely packed, so much they can’t even really speak without screaming the words, but Rei can’t stop smiling because Nagisa can’t seem to and even though his hands are freezing, it feels immensely satisfying to be one of those first 108 people who gets to ring the bell. He’s never done that before, not in his whole life.

They don’t stay out much past ringing the bell, but Nagisa leans up on his toes to suggest another coffee date sometime, or maybe another movie. His sisters have been cleaning their apartment for the New Year, so he might even be able to host. 

Rei nods along and sees Nagisa safe off on the train before heading home himself. He can still feel the bell rope against his palms, an immensely satisfying feeling, and he lets himself into his apartment feeling weirdly and wonderfully elated about the coming of the New Year. 

 

* * *

 

As fate would have it, they end up at another wedding together before anymore movie nights or coffee dates can be planned. 

“I am at least almost completely sure our meddling older siblings are planning this,” Nagisa whispers as Rei helps him arrange bouquets of baby’s breath. Rei would not be surprised in the least if this is true. Though the two of Nagisa’s sisters he’s met seem very nice and not at all like the hellions in heels Nagisa had made them out to be. Katsumi, on the other hand, keeps sending him not-so-subtle winks and thumbs up from where he’s setting the bar. 

“So what does baby’s breath mean in flower language?” he asks. He doesn’t bring up yellow acacia.

Nagisa laughs. “Well, like all flowers, it can mean a million things, but my favorite is long-lasting love. Which makes it very appropriate for weddings! And these—” He places a single pale pink flower in the middle of the vase. “—are peonies, which can symbolize a happy marriage. Much better than sweet peas. It’s because they actually let Chiasa design the bouquets this time.” 

“They look very pretty,” Rei says, and Nagisa beams at him. 

‘I’ll let her know you said that!” 

It’s not that big of a deal, Rei wants to say, but Nagisa has already scurried off to the next table. 

They finish the bouquets with time to spare while Mizuki and Chiasa prepare the much more elaborate arrangements along the buffet table and lead long strings of flowers up and around the doorways. It’s almost like walking into a garden. And then Hazuki Flower Arrangements are packing up their boxes and carrying everything out to the van. Rei and Katsumi both pitch in. 

“We have to pack it up early in case you decide to take a flying leap over a table again,” Mizuki tells Rei with a subtle dig at his ribs and Rei feels his cheeks burn red. He’s never going to live that down, is he?

Nagisa is about to climb in the back of the van when Chiasa slams it shut in front of him. “Rei-kun helped so much with the flowers, it seems only fair you stay and help him.” 

Rei opens his mouth to protest, to say that he’s not even sure why Katsumi asked him along for a reception with only forty guests, but Katsumi firmly agrees that he could use the extra hands and then the Hazuki sisters are driving away throwing waves out the window and Rei could simply kill his brother. Nagisa turns to Katsumi very slowly and says, “I don’t know anything about mixing drinks. I can pour the sparkling cider but that’s pretty much it.” 

Katsumi claps him on the back cheerfully. “Well, then you can pour that sparkling cider. And Rei will be right there too. He can help in a pinch.”

“I am now quite absolutely certain our meddling older siblings are having way too much fun with this,” Nagisa mutters as he follows Rei back to the venue. Rei nods emphatically and reaches back to give Nagisa’s hand a reassuring little squeeze. 

“It’ll be fine.” 

Of course it’s fine. There’s only forty guests! Once the initial rush is over, even Rei could be handling this gig one-handed. Nagisa looks increasingly bored, and finally Katsumi kicks Rei a little harder than necessary and nods towards the door. Like Rei is supposed to have any idea what that’s supposed to mean. But he grabs his warm coat and gloves and gestures quietly for Nagisa to do the same, and they sneak away just as the cake is being cut. 

The lawn is lit around the perimeter with white lamps that match the layer of undisturbed snow on the ground. Nagisa strides ahead and disturbs it first, and then he wipes off a wrought iron bench with one gloved hand. The wooly bobble on his hat is like a lighthouse in a storm—bright yellow in the snow that’s beginning to sprinkle down once more. Come morning, their footprints will have disappeared along with any sign they were ever here. 

Rei sits beside Nagisa on the bench and Nagisa relaxes into his shoulder with a contented little sigh. “As annoying as older siblings are, this is nice. Cold, but nice. Oh!” 

Music has begun to play from inside the venue, the sound a bit muffled but clear enough. A delicate orchestral tune. In a half second, Nagisa is back on his feet, holding a hand out towards Rei. “Dance with me?” 

There’s no way Rei could refuse.

 

* * *

 

The snow falls softly around them as they turn in slow circles beneath the glow of the lamps. Nagisa has his head pressed to Rei’s chest, ear turned to his heart. The bobble of his hat tickles Rei’s nose. His arms wrap up and around so his hands clasp in between Rei’s shoulders, and Rei’s hands meet in the small of Nagisa’s back. They’re both in such poofy coats it barely matters, but Rei still feels indescribably happy at the contact. Nagisa sighs, his breath a cloud. “I love this song.” 

“Do you know it?” 

“No, but I’m hearing it now and I love it.” 

Rei laughs, a low chuckle that barely escapes his mouth. “That’s such a you thing to say, Nagisa-kun.” 

Nagisa turns his head and cranes his neck back so he can stare up at Rei as they continue to slowly dance to the not-their-song. “What do you mean?” 

What did he mean? He meant the way Nagisa seems to approach everything in life, with the idea that things could be better, with milkshakes and snowflakes and the meanings of flowers. He meant the way that he’d fallen in love with Nagisa, a sudden moment of change, of meeting someone and deciding to love them without any common sense involved at all. He meant that he loves this song too, just for giving him this moment. But he’d be crazy to admit any of that. 

“Can I kiss you?” he asks instead. 

Nagisa stares up at him, blinks, and then hides his face against Rei’s coat. “Oh thank God,” he mutters, and tightens his arms around Rei. “I thought I’d have to ask first.” 

“...what?” Rei says in response, because he is a top-notch Romantic™. 

Nagisa looks back up at him with an exasperated expression. “Rei-chan, I have wanted to kiss you since the night you broke all my flower vases.” 

“... _ why _ ?” Rei says, because he’s really  _ killing it  _ tonight. 

Nagisa bites back on a smile and brings his hands around to squish Rei’s cheeks. “I think it was the labelled drawers.”

“Oh shut up,” Rei groans, and grabs Nagisa’s chin between his fingers so he can bring their mouths together. 

It’s a first kiss Rei figures. It ought to be short. Chaste. 

Nagisa has other ideas. His arms loop around Rei’s neck as he pushes himself up on his toes, smooshing their noses together in a kiss that isn’t short and chaste at all but positively desperate. Nagisa groans in frustration when Rei pulls away, but Rei just tilts his head so they don’t break their noses and kisses Nagisa again, feeling the hunger begin to show in his own lips, his own gloved hands sliding down to Nagisa’s jaw and holding him there while Rei kisses him with all the passion he’s been storing up for months and months, with all that strange sudden love that’s turned everything in his life around. 

Rei keeps his eyes open. He knows it’s not conventional, but he can’t miss the snowflakes that settle on Nagisa’s flushed cheeks and then melt away, can’t miss the white puffs of their breath in the winter night, can’t miss the way Nagisa’s eyes slowly open when he finally drops back to the soles of his boots and glances up at Rei almost bashfully. 

“Sorry. Was that too much?”

It was Rei’s second first kiss ever. And he knows that, even if this thing he has with Nagisa ends with disaster, he’ll at least always cherish this memory of a kiss in the falling snow, dancing to the wedding music playing faintly in their background. 

“Actually, it wasn’t quite enough,” he says, and Nagisa smiles before Rei kisses him again, and again, and again. 

Even with the snow beginning to soak into his dress shoes and the soft music indoors beginning to change into fast-paced pop, it is a perfect moment. 

If everything else in Rei’s life has led to this, maybe that’s alright.

 

* * *

 

Rei had known he was a little bit...well, not to be dramatic, but perhaps slightly broken. Between losing the love of his life since he was sixteen, settling for a career of mind-numbing boredom, and generally being an overall failure in his own eyes, he knew not all the pieces were fit in just right. He never went to bed feeling like he had accomplished anything and he never woke up anticipating a good day. And while he didn’t exactly yearn for the emptiness of the abyss or anything like that, there were times he thought it would be okay to just  _ not _ wake up in the morning, just keep sleeping and sleeping the days and months and years away. Not many people would miss him. So, yeah, a little broken.

Nagisa doesn’t fix his broken bits, because that isn’t something a romance is responsible for, but he makes it feel like it’s  _ alright _ to be a little bit broken. Because he has his broken parts too, just like anyone does, and he doesn’t expect Rei to be a perfect whole. Rei doesn’t like his job. Nagisa hates feeling so indebted to his sisters. Rei is failing his younger self. Nagisa constantly worries that he’s letting down his parents. It doesn’t feel like complaining, to reveal these things to Nagisa, even though he’d always sort of felt that way when it was his girlfriend. Nagisa wants to listen, that’s the thing. He wants to listen because he wants to know because then maybe there’s something he can say or do to help or at least make Rei feel better. And Rei wants to give that back just as badly. 

He’s only realizing now that there  _ had _ been problems with his first relationship, and they’re not even necessarily the ones his girlfriend had pointed out before leaving him. 

But now, there is something to wake up for in the mornings and one more person who would miss Rei if he just kept sleeping. It’s amazing how much that can change things.

 

* * *

 

He visits Nagisa’s apartment once, when Nagisa deems it clean enough. Rei still doesn’t see the demons in Nagisa’s sisters’ eyes, but apparently Nagisa had been their favorite doll to play with when they were young so, yes, he can admit that could result in lingering feelings of resentment that Rei just won’t have. Chiasa and Mizuki are the middle children of the Hazuki family. Living with his sisters had been better than living with his parents back on the coast, Nagisa had decided after completing school and realizing he had no way of supporting himself, and so the trio had made themselves a home. It has a lot of flowers in it, which Rei would have expected, but also a lot of color and patterns and general feelings of chaos even when there’s nothing littering the floor. There’s so much furniture for so small a place in so many contrasting styles and colors, so many different throw rugs tossed on top of each other like every day is a game of ‘the floor is lava’ and they’re all determined to win. 

“We’re fingerpainting,” Nagisa explains once Rei is inside, and wiggles the fingers of his right hand, which are indeed all covered with paint. 

“Fingerpainting?” 

“Mmhmm.” Nagisa leads him to the kitchen through an apartment where  _ every single available surface _ has been decorated somehow—posters and stickers and macaroni art—where Chiasa and Mizuki are already at work with a giant canvas spread out on the table. 

“Rei-kun!” Chiasa practically sings when she sees him, and passes him a bucket full of various paints. “Make yourself messy!”

“Chiasa believes in art therapy,” Nagisa says simply, and grabs a bottle of blue from the bucket. He smears the color onto his fingers and leaves a blue curl over a bare patch of canvas. Rei holds out his own fingers pleadingly, and Nagisa studies his face for a moment before squeezing some yellow onto his pointer finger. “There we go. Therapy!” 

Rei pokes his finger down on the canvas and the paint squishes rather delightfully beneath his touch. 

“I don’t think you have to believe in art therapy to know that sometimes smearing your hands with paint is good for the soul,” Chiasa says primly. She’s the one who looks the most like Nagisa. Same hair. “Clay works too. Right, Rei-kun?” 

Rei doesn’t think he’s touched fingerpaint since he was six. He makes a vague noise of agreement and reaches for the red. He wants to leave more blobs. 

It isn’t long before Mizuki goes to turn on some music and pours everyone some soda. They leave messy fingerprints all over the glasses and Nagisa and Mizuki are singing along to the radio and Chiasa is smiling as she sips her soda and Rei is quite proud of the yellow and red dots he’s scattered all over the canvas. Chiasa meets his eyes and winks. Rei turns a little pink but it’s hard to feel too embarrassed in such a carefree atmosphere. 

He can start to see why Nagisa is the way he is, standing here with paint on his fingers and soda bubbles popping on his tongue. 

After the painting is done and the canvas is drying, Nagisa invites Rei into his bedroom because apparently that’s the only place to get some privacy (the last word said very loudly and deliberately in the direction of his sisters). It’s also a very colorful room, with a bookshelf full of manga and novels and magazines about swimming. There are pictures on the wall as well, framed, and when Rei leans close, he can tell which one of the four children in the picture is little Nagisa, and then slightly older little Nagisa, and then probably teenaged Nagisa, surrounded by the same three boys who aged up similarly. Haru-chan and Mako-chan and Rei-chan, if Rei remembers correctly from Nagisa’s stories. His swim team. Wait…

“Is that—?” Rei starts, but Nagisa cuts him off with a sigh and the shutting of the door. 

“Yeah. Haru-chan is Nanase-san to most people. And Rin-chan too, he’s Matsuoka-san. I could sell those pictures to their fans and make a fortune.” 

Is Nagisa seriously telling him that his swim team included two Olympic athletes? 

“And Mako-chan teaches swimming now,” Nagisa continues, going to flop down on his bed. “He’s great. The kids love him.” 

Rei looks to the pictures to Nagisa and then back again. You’d think that being friends with Olympic athletes would be something that would have come up by now. Maybe something he could have mentioned while sharing stories about the swim club? 

But if he didn’t mention it then, Rei is sure Nagisa had a reason. He won’t bother him for it now.

“Come kiss me, Rei-chan?” Nagisa asks, tone oddly sad, and Rei obliges, pushes Nagisa’s hair back and kisses him soft as the mattress dips beneath them and a few plush animals fall out of place. Anything he can do to make Nagisa feel better.

“I’m the odd one out,” Nagisa says softly, a while later while he and Rei simply lie on the bed together. He has a plush penguin wrapped in his arms, while Rei amuses himself with Nagisa’s hair and the way it always bounces back into place. 

“Sorry?”

Nagisa sighs and shuts his eyes. “Hmm. I guess...I just feel strange, when my best friends are doing so well, and I’m living with my sisters. I don’t feel like I can even talk to them anymore. I’m scared to talk to them. I don’t know what they’d think.”

Rei can’t exactly relate, but he presses a kiss to Nagisa’s temple. “I think...I think that if they are good friends, they’d think that it’s alright for you to move at a different pace. To take a different path. Otherwise we’d all be Olympic athletes and completely flood the market.” 

Nagisa opens his eyes and stares up at Rei, brow furrowed. “Yeah?” 

Rei nods and shifts so he can kiss Nagisa’s lips. “ _ I _ don’t think worse of you for living with your sisters. Or for working in the flower shop.” Another kiss. “I think you’re wonderful no matter where you work or where you live. And I think anyone who knows you thinks the same.” 

Nagisa smiles a little and lets go of the penguin so he can wrap his arms around Rei’s neck instead. “Thanks, Rei-chan.” And then they both jump—or nearly fall off the bed in Rei’s case—because Mizuki barges into the room, declaring that dinner and a movie is set to go. 

Rei isn’t exactly surprised to discover that Nagisa isn’t the only one in his family who just can’t keep quiet during movies. Mizuki also has the habit of throwing pretzel bits at the screen whenever a character she doesn’t like is on it. It’s far more exciting than any theater Rei has ever been in, and having Nagisa curled against his side is a nice bonus. 

By the time the movie finishes, Chiasa declares that their fingerpainting is ready to be displayed. This involves a frantic run around the apartment searching for some bare space of wall, but there’s none to be found. Mizuki agrees to take down a poster for a boy band in exchange for a week no doing dishes and the newly vacated area in the hallway is redecorated with the massive canvas that covers way more than just the space the poster had left, but the Hazuki siblings seem content. Rei stands before the painting and smiles at the sight of his own dots of color next to Nagisa’s blue swirls. There’s something lovely and permanent about it. 

Chiasa catches his eye again and smiles, and looks so strangely like her younger brother when she does so. “So, was it good for the soul?” 

Rei nods firmly. “Yes. Yes, very good I think.” 

Nagisa squeezes his hand tight and leans his head on Rei’s shoulder. “Fingerpainting is how you know you’re alive.” 

“I thought that was milkshakes?”

Nagisa smiles up at him. “Ah, yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? It’s both.” He keeps smiling up at Rei for a moment, eyes gentle, and then he whispers conspiratorially, “I kind of really want a milkshake now.” 

He does feel alive, Rei decides as he stands in the cold with the three siblings, all of them sipping milkshakes frantically with red tips of their noses and ears. He feels vividly alive, like he has accomplished something important today when really all he did was get paint on his fingers and drink a milkshake. 

Maybe that’s the trick of it. He’s just been trying too hard this entire time. 

 

* * *

 

The flower shop is not far away from Rei’s apartment by train, and as the winter passes into spring, Rei spends more and more time there on the days Nagisa is working, hidden behind the counter, sometimes with his laptop so he can get work done at the same time. It’s amazing how content he can be to simply sit there and do the math while Nagisa bustles about. Unlike with movies, Nagisa doesn’t seem to need to fill the silence here, just smiles at Rei when their eyes catch and continues on his way, although he does whisper to the flowers an awful lot. It’s another thing that makes Rei feel alive, like he filled his day with something meaningful. 

Somedays, the words sit on the tip of his tongue. He wants to tell Nagisa he loves him. Wants Nagisa to understand just how important he is. But something always holds those words back. Because it’s hard to convince himself that it’s alright to make himself vulnerable to love again, that the reward can outweigh the risk. He’d thought for too long after the breakup that he’d never find anyone again who would be able to accept him, wholly and completely, all his quirks and bad habits and those parts of himself he thought would make it impossible for anyone else to love him. The fact that he and Nagisa found each other is sometimes almost too much to believe. And then, some days, it’s frightening. 

Rei tries so hard not to be afraid on those days, but he can’t help it. This love for Nagisa he has, so unexpected and so sudden, so fierce, is so unlike any love he’s felt before, and sometimes he thinks that if this goes wrong, he’ll burn away completely. He sits in the quiet Hazuki shop and watches Nagisa arranging bouquets and his chest aches with the thought of losing this. 

“You’re quiet today, Rei-chan,” Nagisa says one day as he waters the succulents. There hasn’t been a customer in two hours, and the melting snow outside is a gradually-thinning blanket over the little shop. Rei didn’t bother bringing his laptop today, preferring to watch Nagisa fight to keep the orchids from dying. He leans against the counter and watches Nagisa flit about the shop. For someone who is working here out of pity, Nagisa sure has an affinity for it. 

“Am I quiet?” Rei asks. 

“Yup. You’re thinking. Sad thoughts?” Nagisa always wants to know the nature of Rei’s thoughts. 

“No,” Rei replies, watching the way Nagisa’s curls fall into his eyes as he leans over to coo at a plant. “Just complicated ones.” 

This love was so suddenly there, and he’s terrified of the fact he will miss it this time too, when things start to fall apart. And then Rei worries that he needs to buy Nagisa gifts or kiss him some more, somehow make him realize how much Rei wants him to stay, because Rei has always been garbage at expressing those sorts of things through words. The dream that is falling in love with Nagisa could so easily pop at any time, and Rei isn’t sure his hands are gentle enough to hold it. And then he has to factor in that the dream isn’t just them in this moment in the safety of the flower shop, but tomorrow, and the day after, with both of them searching for new jobs or new purpose and Nagisa hoping to find his own place on top of that and this little dream born of a single moment is so very fragile against the weight of endless unknown tomorrows.

He jumps a little when Nagisa leaps up onto the counter and sits with a leg on either side of him. He leans over and pushes Rei’s glasses up into his hair because they’ve discovered that Nagisa’s rather enthusiastic style of kissing often ends with the glasses getting rather rudely in the way. Rei’s vision is immediately compromised, but he can still tell that Nagisa is frowning. He tilts Rei’s face up until they’re almost nose to nose. “Complicated?” 

Another thing Rei has learned about Nagisa is that it’s almost impossible for Rei to lie to him. “I guess...the future,” he elaborates. “I’m thinking about the future.” 

“What about it?” 

“My job, I guess. And yours.” 

Nagisa leans back so Rei can’t see his expression at all anymore. He’s just a blob. “Why are you thinking complicated thoughts about my job?” 

It’s easier, actually, when he can’t see Nagisa’s face. “Because I’d like to see you being in my future too,” he says, and waits for the reaction. 

The reaction is a gentle kiss, soft and lingering. Nagisa pulls away, brushing their noses together, and slips his fingers into Rei’s hair, smoothing it away from his forehead. And then he flicks Rei’s glasses back down in a playful gesture and grins when Rei blinks and looks back at him with vision restored. “That’s awfully romantic of you, Rei-chan.” 

Rei bites at his lip and then gathers Nagisa’s hands in his. “I just...want to consider you and what you want to do. Whether you want to...to make this a long-term thing with me or not. Whether you want to stay and work at the shop for the time being or if you have plans you haven’t told me about?” He ends the sentence in a lilt, turning everything into a question. Nagisa studies him, fingers again combing absentmindedly through Rei’s hair. 

“I don’t know what I want to do,” he says at last. “I studied literature and philosophy and thought about becoming a teacher but none of those stuck. I’ve also thought about becoming a tour guide of some sort, maybe on a cruise or something, so I can see the world. But working in the flower shop really isn’t bad. I like flowers.” He smiles at Rei and shrugs.  “I like making bouquets when the flowers have meaning. I like ignoring meanings and just putting pretty colors together. I like keeping plants alive and trying to make them bloom as beautifully as I can. I just don’t like that I’m living on my sisters’ charity.” The smile dies and is replaced with a little scowl that, again, disappears quickly to become a contented expression. “But I don’t have any other prospects, not really, so no plans. But with you? Yes, I would like to make this a long-term thing.” He presses a kiss to Rei’s forehead, and then the end of his nose. “That wasn’t clear already?” 

“Well!” Of course. It was just… “I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” Rei admits, and Nagisa stares at him with huge sympathetic eyes. 

“I guess long-term plans have sort of screwed you over before, huh? Well, I plan on sticking around.” His mouth quirks up into a little half-grin. “If you’ll have me.” 

And Rei shoves his glasses back up into his hair. There’s a boy he has to kiss the hell out of.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Rei runs his fingers up and down the scar hidden beneath his hair and thinks about the night he met Nagisa. Eleven months ago now, because of the five months between their first and second nights together. But Rei wonders if Nagisa would enjoy it if Rei remembered that first disaster night as their anniversary. Sure, it hadn’t been a date officially, but neither had the night they got milkshakes, the night Rei had fallen in love. 

Hospitals could be romantic sometimes, right?

 

* * *

 

They sleep together long before they actually sleep together. Some nights after a movie or a board game or even just watching silly internet videos and getting slightly tipsy on the nice alcohol Katsumi has gifted Rei every single year and Rei has never opened, it’s easier to just ask Nagisa to stay over so he doesn’t have to deal with the trains so late at night. And since it would be silly for his boyfriend to sleep on the couch with Rei in his bed, Nagisa ends up curled into Rei’s chest in the bed, wearing borrowed pajamas much too long in the sleeve, humming happily to himself until he falls asleep. Rei, even with the alcohol in his system, tends to stay awake for much longer those nights, brushing his fingers through Nagisa’s hair and enjoying the way it always springs back into place, or just studying Nagisa’s face like the creepy stalker he is and memorizing every detail. And sometimes, while kissing, their hands tend to stray to other places, but Nagisa always stops before things get too heated. Probably a little bit because he knows Rei’s never been intimate with another man, but Rei also thinks it’s because Nagisa knows how much his last relationship shaped the way Rei views romance, and the fact he didn’t have sex with his girlfriend until three years together does kind of make him wonder about sleeping together after only really six months of properly dating, even though he knows that six months would be considered a long time by a lot of people. It’s because Nagisa sees Rei and knows that, yes, he is still a little bit broken. 

But those broken pieces  _ are _ actually healing over, Rei realizes. And it’s not Nagisa, or at least he doesn’t think it is. At least not Nagisa directly. What is making Rei feel not-so-broken, he decides one night as Nagisa sleeps against him, is the act of loving someone again, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. Even if sometimes he is afraid. Nagisa doesn’t have to do anything, because that’s not what romance is responsible for. It’s Rei himself doing the fixing through the simple act of laying in his bed and loving that warm little bundle safely asleep wrapped in Rei’s arms. 

It’s not something he could have imagined for himself a year ago, a month before that first remarkable meeting with the sheer pain of the breakup still turning his stomach daily, but yet, here he is. Still here, and actually happy. 

His teenage self may have been dismayed to see where his twenty-seven year old self ended up, but his twenty-six year old self? He would be pretty amazed. 

Somehow, that feels good enough for now. Maybe it could be enough forever.

 

* * *

 

He gets the batches of flowers from Mizuki, who laughs and laughs when he comes to the store and asks for what he needs. Nagisa’s mouth just drops open when he walks into Rei’s apartment that night for dinner. 

“Rei-chan, did you buy out half the flower shop?”

Rei crosses his arms and smirks. His cologne still smells awful strong to his nose, but he hadn’t been sure what a dab was, exactly. “Just the buttercups and hydrangeas and carnations. And a few pink roses with assorted greenery.” 

Nagisa just stares until the smile creeps slowly over his face. “These were the flowers that you...was that...is this the one year anniversary of your epic leap into my flowers, Rei-chan?” 

“I still have the reception card to prove it,” Rei says, unable to contain his smugness. Yep, this had been the right move. Nagisa nearly bowls them both over the back of the couch when he throws himself into Rei’s arms. 

“You’re ridiculous,” he tells Rei, and kisses him breathless. There’s not a whole ton of coherent sentences after that. Twelve months is enough, Rei decides. He’s feels ready.

Afterwards, Rei lies on his stomach in bed, arms folded beneath his pillow while he stares at Nagisa beside him. Nagisa has lazy, sleepy eyes and doodles meaninglessly with one finger along Rei’s bare back. 

“That was pretty nice,” Rei says after a while, and Nagisa smiles before leaning over and dotting a few kisses along Rei’s shoulder. 

“Good. I wanted it to be nice.” They lay there for a while more until Nagisa pipes up with, “I’m sort of hungry.” 

They’re two hours late for the reservation at a fancy restaurant Rei had made, but the ramen place down the street is still open, which does feel more authentically  _ them _ . They share one side of the booth and Nagisa steals what he wants from Rei’s bowl whenever Rei makes the mistake of looking out the window. “Was that a karaoke place on the way here? We should do karaoke sometime.” 

“With who?” Rei asks. One of the things they’ve both unfortunately discovered is that, out of university with their old friends spread all over being Olympic athletes and all that, and also only working by themselves or with their siblings, the only real social interaction they have is with each other. 

Nagisa still hums and haws over it and then steals Rei’s egg. “Could be just you and me.” 

Rei frowns, both at the idea and at the egg now disappearing into Nagisa’s mouth. “Aren’t you supposed to go with a big group of friends?” 

“Well, we could invite Katsumi and my sisters, but they’d probably just set us up to sing romantic duets and then high five each other over being so subtle.” 

That punches a laugh out of Rei. “They would, wouldn’t they?” 

“Mmhmm. Have you noticed how they’re still trying to set us up even when we’re already dating? Example: the amount of flowers in your apartment should normally cost well over a hundred and thirteen thousand yen. Now how—Rei-chan don’t choke—much did my sisters charge you?”

Rei stops hacking up broth long enough to croak, “Six thousand. They said they had a new shipment to make room for.” 

Nagisa sighs and buries his face in his hand. “They’re terrible.” 

Rei takes the chance to steal the chashu from Nagisa’s bowl. “Yeah, terrible,” he agrees, mouth full, and laughs when Nagisa’s head snaps up and he looks at Rei with utter, complete betrayal. 

They walk back to Rei’s apartment hand in hand. “Well, that was nicer than sitting at your hospital bed,” Nagisa says with a grin while Rei leads them inside the apartment building and then into his apartment. “New shipment,” he mutters to himself as he glances around at the mass of flowers, but his eyes are warm when he turns back to Rei. “Can I stay over?” 

There is nothing Rei would like more.

 

* * *

 

It happens quite spontaneously, three months later while they sit in the flower shop. Summer has passed and the leaves are turning outside, but inside, the air conditioning battles the last heat wave. Rei has his laptop and is working on the latest batch of calculations he was sent, a pad of paper and pencil beside him all covered in his own scribblings. Nagisa has more customers than Rei is used to, and is running all over the shop most of the day while Rei hides behind the counter. It’s with a sigh of relief that Nagisa flips the sign on the door to say CLOSED and locks the place up. He crouches next to Rei and squints at his computer screen. “I’m glad I do the flowers,” he says at last, and flops down onto the floor, eyes sliding closed as he leans his head on Rei’s shoulder. 

Rei can be done for the day. He closes his laptop and sets it off to the side. “Come here,” he tells Nagisa, and guides Nagisa’s head down into his lap. Nagisa hums happily as Rei begins to play with his hair. 

“Do I get a foot rub too?” 

“I charge for those.” 

“So mean, Rei-chan…” Nagisa yawns and curls his body a little tighter. 

Rei smiles a little and keeps playing with Nagisa’s hair. “Do you want to get dinner together? My treat.” 

Nagisa scrunches up his nose. “I told you. I want a foot rub.” 

Rei rolls his eyes and laughs. “I love you,” he says, chuckle still in his voice. 

“Mmm, love you too,” Nagisa mumbles, and it’s only a few seconds later that Rei realizes what even happened. “Don’t freak out, Rei-chan,” Nagisa tells him calmly without opening his eyes. “You love me. I love you. Everything is perfect.” 

Rei schools his panicked expression back into something a little less dramatic and takes a few slow, deep breaths. What had he been so frightened of all this time? That had been the easiest thing in the world. “Yeah,” he agrees at last. “It’s perfect.”

 

* * *

 

A perfect autumn passes into a perfect winter, one of catching snowflakes on their tongues and walking in the parks on freshly fallen snow after everyone else has disappeared from the streets, where they can feel safe to hold each other and kiss beneath the streetlamps. The flower shop is their own personal haven in the colder season, and Nagisa’s sisters joke that they might as well give Rei his own apron. Rei begins to think about how to invite Nagisa to move in with him permanently. He spends at least half his nights at Rei’s anyway and all his things are slowly migrating over as well, so surely Rei isn’t being ridiculous considering making that step now. And then Nagisa would at least not be living with his sisters and would feel a little less indebted to them. 

Rei’s parents invite Rei and Katsumi home for the New Year, along with any significant others, which is meant as a nudge for Katsumi to settle down already and a huge red flag to Rei that his parents are feeling awfully curious about this boy he seems to mention a lot in their phone calls. Nagisa insists it will be fun, which is how Rei ends up crammed between Nagisa and Katsumi for the three train rides home. Katsumi puts on headphones and zones out, which Rei is eternally grateful for when Nagisa starts asking for more information about Rei’s childhood. His brother knows  _ all _ his most embarrassing stories and Rei definitely doesn’t need him chipping in. Rei fiddles with his gloves and tries not to feel so nervous. Coming out to his parents had been...complicated. The fact that he also liked boys hadn’t seemed relevant when he thought he’d be spending his life with a girl, and then it was only after the breakup that he’d let it slip to Katsumi. His brother had urged him to tell their parents, assured him that they wouldn’t mind, and then muttered that they had kind of figured it out for themselves, which hadn’t made Rei feel any better. So he’d called his mom up and confessed one night when the numbers just weren’t working for him, and she’d told him she loved him and that was the only thing he needed to know, but he still hadn’t seen them face to face since that conversation. And definitely not with his boyfriend at his side. 

He needn’t have worried so much. Rei’s parents seem as enamored by Nagisa as Rei had been, and Nagisa had brought gifts as bribery, home cooked food from his sisters and little hanging terrariums full of miniature plants Nagisa had put together himself. He also puts himself right to work with helping to prepare meals and wash dishes to the point he’s making Rei and Katsumi look bad. Because his parents can at least acknowledge that they’re not teenagers, an extra bedroll is set up in Rei’s bedroom, which is unnecessary because Nagisa squishes in next to Rei anyways. 

New Years with Rei’s parents means a lot more of the observed traditions. Much more in the way of mandarins and mochi. It’s like being sprung back twenty years in time. They all go to receive fortunes at the temple too. Rei opens his where no one else will see. 

Daikichi. Great Blessing. Rei’s eyes wander to Nagisa, who is still trying to pick out what slip of paper he wants. Great Blessing. That’s good. The other fortunes have him a little more speculative. Tenkyo. Moving or changing residences. Well, he has been thinking about asking Nagisa to move in. Could be that. Endan isn’t hard to guess either. Wedding proposals. With the number of times he and Nagisa have met at weddings, Rei can hardly be surprised, even with what little stock he puts in fortunes. 

Nagisa finally picks a fortune, scans it quickly, and then runs to tie it to the fence. A bad fortune then? Rei will try not to worry too much about it. But Nagisa is quiet the rest of the day, and even though he’s all smiles for Rei’s parents, he’s quiet all the way home too. 

Nagisa never stays sad for long though. Or, at least, he covers up the sadness quickly. As the weather warms, the flower shop grows more busy and Rei is more in the way than anything, so he spends most days at home. He’s given Nagisa a spare key, and it’s more than once he wakes up from where he’d fallen asleep hunched over his laptop to a blanket covering his shoulders and a small bouquet wrapped in ribbon laying somewhere nearby. Sometimes Nagisa will be sprawled out on Rei’s couch, dead to the world, and sometimes he’s simply disappeared. Either way, Rei loves him for those little bouquets. 

They work another wedding together, a smaller affair that allows Rei and Nagisa to sneak away early and dance to the music behind the cover of the hedges. Nagisa winds peonies together into a crown and places it atop Rei’s head. “Our fourth wedding, Rei-chan,” he whispers, like it’s some great secret, and Rei kisses him, bears him down into the grass and kisses him breathless in the safety of the hedges. 

“I love you,” he says, staring Nagisa straight in the eyes, and Nagisa smiles before wrapping his arms around Rei’s neck. 

“I love you too, Rei-chan.”

And Rei could spend forever hearing those words. 

He’s happy. He’s well and truly completely happy. How insane is that? He’s not broken. He’s not even pieced back together. He’s a whole and imperfect human being. Sure his job could be better, sure his past love life is still a disaster, sure he still doesn’t have a goldfish, sure his sixteen year old self would probably still consider this a failure. Sure all the dreams he once had have died, but he’s replaced them with new ones, ones his sixteen year old self wouldn’t even understand because he hadn’t been through enough yet. Rei could punch out numbers for the rest of his life with small bouquets left nearby and be content with that. As long as he could hug Nagisa to him tight, smell that scent of cut  flower stems, he could live a normal and boring life and be happy for it. 

Which, of course, is when one of his old dreams has to come around and bite him. 

He isn’t expecting the email from his supervisor, and he most certainly is not expecting the video conference the next day. Would he reconsider taking the position he once turned down? Actually, more than that, would he consider a position several levels up the food chain? His work so far has been exemplary and they’d love to see what he could do given a team and a personal place at the research facility, where he’d be on site for all discoveries and be right on the cutting edge of geothermal energy.

How would it feel, Rei Ryugazaki, to be a part of the team that changes the world?

Yes, of course they can give him a few days to think about it. 

He ends up at Katsumi’s bar, knocking down shot after shot until his brother physically pries the bottle from his hand and drags him into the storage closet, where he sits and is sick into a cleaning bucket. Katsumi opens the closet door once he closes the bar early and stares down at Rei with an expression that is two parts sympathy and one part annoyance about the whole throwing up thing. “You could never handle your alcohol. What’s wrong?” His eyes widen. “Did Nagisa dump you?” 

The last time Rei had come to drink at Katsumi’s bar, it was because the love of his life (or so he’d thought) had broken up with him, so it is a pretty valid conclusion to make. Rei still sends him a dirty look. 

“No, Nagisa didn’t break up with me.” 

Katsumi lends him a hand and hauls Rei upright. “Okay. You need some water. What the hell is wrong then?”

“Iceland,” Rei moans, and the whole story spills out from there. 

Katsumi listens patiently, refilling Rei’s glass of water whenever it runs out. His stomach stops feeling quite so queasy.

“Have you told Nagisa yet?” Katsumi asks when Rei finishes. Rei shakes his head. “Well, that’s the first thing to do, isn’t it? Because I assume you won’t be turning down an awesome job in Iceland because of how much you love your older brother and want to be near him forever and ever.” 

Rei scowls and rests his cheek on the cool bar surface. Watches the ice in his glass bob about. “I can’t tell him.” 

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll tell me to go.” Nagisa would never want Rei to give up on a dream for his sake. Never. And if Rei decided to stay anyway...well, Rei’s not sure Nagisa would be able to forgive himself for being the reason why. 

Katsumi sighs and walks around the bar to sit next to Rei and clap him on the shoulder. “You need to tell him. This is the sort of thing couples need to decide together.”

“Meh.”

“ _ Rei _ .” His brother’s voice has an edge to it that Rei doesn’t recognize. He runs a finger along the rim of his glass of water and sighs. 

“Fine. I guess so.”

 

* * *

 

Because he’s never been able to lie to Nagisa, Nagisa knows the moment Rei opens the door to the flower shop that something is wrong. He stops watering and rushes over, heedless of the customers milling about. “Bad thoughts?” he asks. 

Rei’s mouth opens and shuts a few useless times. “Complicated ones,” he says at last. 

Nagisa stares up at him with a frown and then says, “Chiasa can cover me.” And then he’s a whirlwind of finishing the watering, checking out customers, and calling in his older sister to take his shift. Rei goes to wait outside so he’s not in the way and feels the spring sun warm on his face, but the worry churning in his stomach seems to have made everything seem colder. He can’t really feel his fingertips. 

It takes Nagisa yanking on his arm a few times to get his attention too. “Rei-chan. Rei-chan? You’re really making me worry.” 

He’s making himself worry, actually. “Is there a...quiet place we can go?” he asks. 

Nagisa bites at his lip but then his face brightens. “I know a place. Just let me wait for Chiasa to get here.” 

Nagisa’s sister isn’t much longer. Rei can hear the whispered conversation between the two of them. 

“What’s wrong? Is he sick?”

“I don’t know, he hasn’t said anything!”

“Okay, fine, go, but you owe me Sunday now.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. See you later, maybe, I’m not sure.” 

Nagisa takes Rei by the arm and smiles big and fake up at him. “Okay, Rei-chan, let’s get out of here. Do you want a milkshake? I want a milkshake.” 

Which is how they both end up with milkshakes, strolling through a nearby park. 

Why does even sweet ice cream taste sour in Rei’s mouth? 

Nagisa settles beneath a cherry tree and pats the grass beside him. “Sit. Tell me.” 

But Rei can’t sit. He feels like he’s going to be sick all over again. He swallows hard to wet his throat. “Iceland,” he manages to croak out. 

Nagisa cocks his head to the side. “What about Iceland?” 

Rei uses the cool sides of his milkshake cup to hopefully stop the pounding in his head. “Got offered a job. In Iceland.” 

Nagisa’s eyebrows shoot up. “As in, really in Iceland? A job in really really Iceland?” His face splits into a grin. “Rei-chan, that’s wonderful!” And then his face falls immediately. “Oh. I guess...I guess I know why you wanted to talk to me.” He slumps against the trunk of the tree and takes a long sip of his milkshake, face scrunching up as he thinks. 

“Nagisa-kun…” Rei manages to drop to his knees on the grass and shuffle forward, to place a hand on Nagisa’s leg, squeezing gently. “I...I’ve made my decision already. It’s not a good job. I much prefer the one I have now. And I want to stay close to Katsumi and my parents…” 

But he can’t lie to Nagisa. Nagisa straightens up, eyes narrowed. “No. No, none of that is true. You told me you turned down the job in Iceland before because of your girlfriend. Not because of Katsumi or your parents, and definitely not because you like the job you have now.”

“W-well, I…” 

“You’d be staying because of me,” Nagisa says, crossing his arms. “Just like with her. You’d be giving up on your dreams because of me.” 

“Well maybe that’s alright!” Rei blurts out. He abandons his milkshake in the grass and crawls a little closer on his knees and tries to reach for Nagisa’s face, but Nagisa jerks out of his grasp. “Maybe I have new dreams!”

“Because of me!” 

“So? Don’t you have new dreams too?” Rei snatches Nagisa’s hand before he can pull that away as well. “Ones with me in them?” 

Nagisa glares at him and then stands up, ripping his hand from Rei’s grasp. “Of course I do! I have pages and pages of them. Filled that entire journal you gave me with ridiculous ideas and impossible dreams. But you’ve wanted this job for years and years, way before you met me! My dreams? They’re silly. Yours? You can’t let me stop you from reaching for those. Not in a million years.” He shakes his head back and forth slowly. “No. I won’t be the second person who keeps you trapped here when you belong somewhere so much greater.”

Rei feels rooted to the ground now, unable to do anything but stare up at Nagisa and pray for him not to say those next words. 

“I won’t be the one who keeps you here, Rei-chan. That would be the most selfish thing I could ever do.” He shrugs and begins to turn away, but not before Rei catches the glimmering of tears in his eyes. Those tears give Rei’s legs the strength to push him upright. This time, Nagisa doesn’t pull away when Rei reaches for his face. He presses their mouths together in something too desperate to be called a kiss. 

“I love you. How am I supposed to leave you behind?” 

Nagisa sighs and casts his eyes to the ground. His milkshake dangles uselessly from one hand. “You loved someone before me. You will love someone after me as well.” 

What? No, no, no…

“Nagisa-kun, I—”

Nagisa stretches up on his toes and kisses Rei one last, gentle time. “Please let us leave this on good terms, Rei-chan.” 

Rei shakes his head and grabs Nagisa’s arms when Nagisa tries to step away. “I want to be with you, Nagisa! More than any job!” 

Nagisa shuts his eyes tight, and when he speaks, it’s almost a yell, voice breaking over every word. “And I want to be with you too, Rei-chan! But I won’t be the reason you stay. And it’s because I love you. I love you and I want you to be the happiest you can be and I know a position in Iceland will make you happier than just crunching numbers. So…” He pushes against Rei’s chest until Rei lets him go. Smiles up at Rei with tear marks staining his cheeks. “I want you to go, Rei-chan. Go follow those old dreams of yours, and find someone else to love. I know you will. You’re very easy to fall in love with.” 

“Nagisa!” But Nagisa steps easily out of reach this time. “Nagisa, I won’t leave you!” 

Nagisa sighs, shuts his eyes, and takes a big sip of his milkshake before answering, very quietly, “Then I guess I have to leave you.” 

Wait, what does that mean? 

“I’m...I’m breaking up with you,” Nagisa whispers, eyes in shadow. “Now you have no reason to stay.” 

This can’t be real. Doesn’t Nagisa understand? Doesn’t he get how he burst into Rei’s world and changed everything? How Rei has learned to love again, how to fix himself, how to dream new dreams because Nagisa was right there beside him? 

Sure, Rei might have loved before and maybe he could love again, could take the lessons that loving Nagisa has taught him and apply them to somebody new, but deep in his bones he knows he will never again love someone caught in a single instant, love someone so irrationally and so suddenly, fall so helplessly and completely into love as he has with Nagisa. Maybe he could love again and be happy, but this type of love he has with Nagisa is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. 

How can Nagisa not understand that? 

“I think I’ll be by tomorrow to pick up my things,” Nagisa says, and runs off down the path before Rei has the chance to respond. Rei stands there, stunned. Is that it then? Everything between them, nearly two years since their first meeting, over in the course of thirty minutes? None of this even feels real. It can’t be real. This is a dream, right? Nagisa has to...he has to understand! He has to change his mind. Doesn’t he see how happy Rei is with exactly how things are? Doesn’t he see how they could be happy together for the rest of their lives? 

But no. Nagisa shows up the next night with Mizuki in tow. Her presence prevents Rei from trying to knock some sense into Nagisa’s head as he gathers up the clothes in Rei’s drawers, the shampoo in the shower, his extra blanket and pillow, the collection of bad horror films. All the little touches that had made Rei’s so carefully organized apartment full of life. Nagisa does smile as he runs a finger along the labels on Rei’s cabinets, and he does hug Rei one last time. He’s always so warm. Rei tries to capture that warmth and hold it inside, but it withers the moment Nagisa walks out of his apartment with a box full of his possessions. 

And then the Hazuki Flower Arrangements van is gone, along with any trace Nagisa was ever there. Except for the little flower arrangements wrapped in ribbons. 

Rei opens his laptop and writes an email of acceptance to the facility in Iceland. With Nagisa gone and all Rei’s new dreams with him, there’s nothing keeping Rei here anymore. And he’s not sure he could keep going here, knowing Nagisa is so close, yet so far from his reach. A new start in a new country might be just the thing he needs.

 

* * *

 

The language barrier is a bit of a challenge, but eventually Rei has a residency permit expedited by his workplace, an apartment for one ready to go just a mere twenty minutes away from the research facility, a flight for two weeks from now, and has been home once more to say his goodbyes to his parents. They don’t ask about Nagisa. Rei is sure Katsumi has filled them in. He’s spent a lot of time venting his woes to his older brother.

“You’ve wanted to work here since your first year in university!” Katsumi chastises as he pours Rei another drink of soda, since he’d long since put a stop to the alcohol. “You gave up the chance once. So you can’t blame Nagisa for not wanting you to give it up again.”

Which is true, Rei will admit only to himself. But it still aches. It aches to sleep alone at night and it aches to not visit the flower shop and it aches to not find little bundles of flowers tied with a ribbon when he wakes up from a nap. It aches to remember each little moment they had shared: meeting by the hospital bed, that first strange night of having a stranger in his home, that night where Rei fell in love and they ate frozen milkshakes at the playground, their first coffee date and catching snowflakes on their tongues, ringing the bell for the New Year, their first kiss with the soft sound of music in the background…

He’s never going to find anything like that again. Sure, he might love again, sure, he might be happy. Finding Nagisa when he thought he’d be alone forever had been proof that there is always another chance at love, a chance at happiness. But it won’t be the kind of happy he’s had these past two years. And Nagisa will become another dream that died. 

The days pass far too quickly, until there’s only three days between Rei and his flight. His belongings have been boxed up and are ready to ship, that cost alone making Rei eternally grateful his new workplace is covering the move. He evacuates his apartment and crashes at Katsumi’s place. Three days. Two days. He’s getting on a plane tomorrow. 

How is he supposed to trade one dream for another? And what about Nagisa’s dreams? Is Rei not supposed to consider them at all? Pages and pages of dreams, Nagisa had said. Filling that whole journal Rei had bought him for their first Christmas together. Pages and pages of dreams. 

He can’t let the last time he sees Nagisa be staring after a disappearing purple van. 

He can’t let the last reminder he holds onto be flowers, pressed into one of his heaviest books, dried petals paper-thin and oh so fragile. 

He can’t let another dream go without fighting for it, at least one last time. 

Rei is on the train when he realizes he’s still dressed in his sweatpants of mourning and a sweater with the sleeves worn out from stressful rubbing. But it’s too late now. He leaves tomorrow, and dreams don’t wait for you to change into something more fashionable. 

It’s Saturday, which means Mizuki is working. Rei had pretty much memorized their schedule. The bell above the doors dings merrily and Mizuki looks up with a customer service smile. It dies on her lips when she sees it’s him. 

“Hi,” she says as Rei tries to catch his breath. It isn’t angry. It’s just sad. “So how are you holding up?” 

“I need flowers,” Rei tells her. “Not a whole lot this time. Just a bouquet. Please.” 

Mizuki nods and leans across the counter to listen.  “What do you need?”

 

* * *

 

Rei has been to the Hazuki apartment a grand total of three times, once to fingerpaint and twice to pick Nagisa up. Rei’s legs carry him there automatically. He stands outside the door and tries to stop the hammering of his heart, but his blood pounds in his ears and his vision is a little blurry at the edges and Rei has never done anything this spontaneously stupid in his life but he’ll regret it forever if he doesn’t. 

His hand shakes as he knocks on the door. 

It takes a moment, and Rei is about to knock again when the door opens. It’s Nagisa, wearing his pajamas and looking completely exhausted. “Mizuki, you need to stop forgetting your key…” he mumbles, and then his eyes travel up from the floor—slowly, slowly—to Rei’s face. His eyes widen and he takes a step back from the doorway. “Rei-chan?”

Rei doesn’t trust his voice. He just nods. 

Nagisa blinks and wipes at his eyes. It looks like he’s been doing a lot of crying lately and it breaks Rei’s heart. “What are you doing here? When are you moving?” 

Rei’s other hand tries not to crush the bouquet hidden behind his back. “I’m...tomorrow. Tomorrow.” 

Nagisa nods and crosses an arm across his chest. He stares down the hallway rather than meet Rei’s eyes. “Well, it’s nice of you to come to say goodbye. You really didn’t have to.” 

“I...I’m not...ahh... “ Rei’s words aren’t working right now. Also his palms are all sweaty and he’s probably going to pass out from anxiety. He withdraws the bouquet from behind his back and holds it out. Like falling in love, he bets it all on this single moment. 

Nagisa stops studying the hallway and instead stares at the bouquet. “Sweet peas,” he whispers. “A sweet goodbye. I had a lovely time but now I have to go.” He reaches out with one finger to gently stroke a purple petal and Rei can hear the slight waver in his voice. “I’ll miss you, Rei-chan. I really will.” 

No, no, that’s not right at all. Rei shakes his head frantically. “No...I…” He thrusts the bouquet out with a new desperation and Nagisa grabs it rather than let it fall to the floor, grabs it, Rei realizes, with hands that are shaking. Because Nagisa’s eyes are welling with tears and his lip is trembling, no matter how much he tries to pin it still with his teeth. No, no, no, this is not how this is supposed to go. Rei doesn’t want to be the cause of any more tears. “These sweet peas…” Rei stammers, “They...they…” He reaches out and wipes a tear from Nagisa’s cheek with his thumb. “They don’t have to mean goodbye,” he says at last. 

Nagisa frowns and stares at him quizzically. He hides his mouth behind the bouquet and mumbles, “Then what do they mean?” 

A neighbor emerging two doors down scares the hell out of both of them. Nagisa reaches out with one hand and hauls Rei inside the apartment and leans on the door to shut it behind them. He hides the lower half of his face with the bouquet once again. “What do they mean, Rei-chan?” 

“You…” Rei starts, and then trips over a pair of high heels left in the doorway. He catches his balance, takes a deep breath, and tries again. “You told me once,” he says, and takes a step closer to Nagisa, forcing him to crane his neck back to meet Rei’s gaze. Rei’s hand moves on automatic and slides a finger down Nagisa’s cheek to rest beneath his chin. “It was the second time we met, actually. Did you know that was the night I first fell in love you? It was.” Nagisa’s eyes are wide. Rei breathes out slowly and continues. “That night, you told me that if you were ever to get married, you’d want there to be purple sweet peas.”

Nagisa blinks. Once. Twice. His mouth drops open. “This is a  _ proposal _ ?”

“Well, I mean…” Rei takes his finger back so he can rake hands through his hair. Probably sticking it all on end but he doesn’t care. “If you want it to be, I guess it’s a proposal. But mostly it’s...it’s…” He groans and turns about in a circle. Trips over some sneakers. Meets Nagisa’s eyes again. “Yes, I guess it is a proposal. You don’t have to say yes. But I want to marry you, Nagisa. I want to spend my life with you. It’s absolutely crazy but you seem to bring that out in me. I don’t know why or how but...but…”

Nagisa sniffs, wipes his face, and then buries his nose in the sweet peas all over again. “But Iceland, Rei-chan. I can’t keep you here. Not when you want to go to Iceland so bad.” 

“So come with me.” 

“What?” 

Rei laughs, the sound bursting from his mouth, frenzied and giddy. “Come with me! I know...I know that’s crazy to ask of you, and you can say no, but if you say yes, I will try everyday to make your life as amazing as you deserve and I bet they could really use more florists there.” He pauses and takes a moment to think. “Pretty sure we could actually really get married in Iceland too. So that...would be something.” 

Nagisa laughs into the bouquet and then takes a few steps forward until he can bonk his head into Rei’s chest. “This is not how I thought my proposal would go,” he admits, and Rei wraps his arms around him—he’s so warm, always so warm—and kisses the top of his head. 

“I was spontaneous.” 

Nagisa nods. The smell of the sweet peas floats up around them as the bouquet is trapped between their bodies. “Very spontaneous. You actually want me to come to Iceland with you?” 

Rei kisses his head again. “It’s the only way to keep all my dreams.” 

“I did always want to see the world. I think moving to Iceland would be a wonderful adventure.” Nagisa tilts his head back and smiles at Rei, then rises on his tiptoes to kiss him. “Yes,” he breathes against Rei’s lips. “I’ll marry you.” 

“Really?” Rei asks, sounding way more completely shocked than he means to, because he is Romantic™. 

Nagisa laughs and then reaches between them to pull a single sweet pea from the bunch. He pinches at the stem and then finds Rei’s hand, raising it to eye level. Slowly, carefully, he wraps the stem of the flower around Rei’s ring finger. “Really really.”

 

* * *

 

A lot can happen in the space of a year. A new job, exciting and stimulating and everything Rei had hoped it would be. A new little flower shop, battling the elements to keep the flowers alive in a way that wins the love of all the locals, along with the florist who talks to his plants and chatters happily away with every customer. A little house of their own, where there are always fresh bouquets on the table and the air smells of cut stems. And there’s the goldfish. His name is Bartholomew. Just another piece of the puzzle that is starting a new life together, a crazy spontaneous thing there is no plan for, impossible to predict.

Maybe dreams are delicate things, easily broken by time or words or chance alone. And maybe they are easy things to think of, easy to fill your head with and lose sight of more important things. But Rei can look back on his dead dreams and the ones ahead and the ones he is living now and see a life paved out in glorious imperfections, the constant discarding and creation of dreams something he needed to do in order to become who he is and stand where he does, alongside the person willing to walk a parallel path. Maybe, he thinks, the most important part of dreams is that they  _ are _ such fragile things, and yet, knowing the risk, you keep dreaming them anyway. And sometimes, you’re lucky enough to find someone who will help keep your dreams safe in exchange for trusting you with their own. 

Of course, this is just a foggy early morning thought, while Rei plays with Nagisa’s hair in the dawn light and softly calls his name, waiting for him to wake up. He doesn’t know anything about dreams, not really. Just his own. And some of Nagisa’s. 

Which is why their fifth wedding together is filled with purple sweet peas. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
